What Would a Time Traveler from 1975 Find Amazing About 2013?

Thanks to everyone who has already pre-ordered a shirt or two. It’s interesting to see that both designs are popular. I thought one might be preferred over the other, but I have almost exactly the same number of orders for each. It’s still early, but they’re running neck and neck (whatever that means…). Which one do you think will come out the winner in this sweepstakes o’ decorative torso coverings?

I sent out a message a few minutes ago, to the Surf Report mailing list, about the t-shirts. How long do you think it will be before someone complains? It’s amazing to me how people sign up for a mailing list, then bitch when they receive an email. It didn’t used to happen; this is a fairly new phenomenon. The last one was just a recap email, about recent posts at the site, and several people were irritated by it.

On Sunday I was driving to work, listening to Clive Bull live from London, through my car speakers. I hooked my phone up to the stereo, and it played perfectly. Not once did it disconnect, or quit working. Shit like that still amazes me. It wasn’t an mp3. It was a live broadcast from England, and I was listening to it in real time, in my car in Dog Balls, Pennsylvania. Cool as hell.

A couple of months ago I saw something on Reddit (I think), where they were talking about the things from 2013 that would be hard to explain to a time traveler from 1975. I think we did that subject here once, and fully suspect they ripped us off. I mean, that’s the ONLY plausible explanation, right?

Anyway, one of the answers made me laugh. It was something along these lines: We all carry devices in our pockets that can access all knowledge and information in the world, but we use them to play games and insult our friends. That’s pretty great, and true.

I don’t think my kids are as amazed by technology as I am, because they grew up with it. When I was young we had rotary phones, needed to watch TV shows when they were actually broadcast, and got our music via large, spinning vinyl platters.

I know we’ve done this subject before, but it’s a good one. Plus, I’m running late for work. I need to go.

In the comments section, please tell us what you think a person from 1975 would find amazing, if he were teleported to 2013. And vice-versa. What do you think kids from today would think about 1975?

Comments

1975-2013….How incredibly divided we still are and likely even more so, but we cannot say why because of the PC police. Hell, I can think of at least 1,000,000 people I would love to personally murder right now!

Number one by a landslide would be the creation of the Internet.
2) The number of TV channels and how much language and uncensored content they get away with today. Also, the DVR. Mind you, they would have completely skipped over the VHS tape generation and almost the DVD one.
3) Cars, or the fact that they got WAYYYYYY shitier over time.

Cars got shitier? I’d take almost any 2013 version of a specific model of car over it’s 1975 version. For example 1975 Mustang vs. 2013 Mustang. The new one looks better, carries more stuff, is safer, rides nicer, stops faster, corners better, is WAYYYYYY quicker and gets better fuel mileage too. By 1975, the gov’t had choked most of the fun out of the automobile.

It also lasts longer and is more reliable. A fuel-injected car starts every time and will never get carburetor icing (well, you might get ice in the throttle body, but TBI is not so great either). And the mid-1970s was a particularly dark time for cars. I remember those 5 liter V8s that wheezed out 170hp or so. Good riddance.
.

–our clothes aren’t made out of plastic and don’t have collars the size of an airplane wing!
–gas is almost $4.00 per gallon.
–people STILL listen to the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Cher.
–kids are pretty much allergic to everything.
–GM went bankrupt.

1975 Home Movies: You need to buy a can of movie-film, and insert it in your movie-camera (which by the way has no sound — everything you shoot will be silent). After shooting a roll of film, you need to drive to a drugstore or film kiosk, and drop off the roll of film. The drugstore or kiosk will ship the film off to a film-processing lab, where a man will dip the film into chemicals in order to turn it into something you can watch. The lab will then ship the processed film back to the store or kiosk, and about a week after you dropped it off, you’ll be able to come pick it up. You’ll take it home, and thread it into your film projector. You’ll set up a big white screen in the room, turn out all the lights, and the family will gather around to watch the silent film that you shot. If Aunt Laura from California wants to see the film, she’ll have to wait till next Thanksgiving when she’s flies out here.

2013 Home Movies: Pull a little device, about the size of a deck of cards, out of your pocket. Start shooting. Push some buttons on the device to upload the footage immediately onto Youtube. Send an instant message (from the same deck-of-cards device) to Aunt Laura in California, telling her your video is available on Youtube. Aunt Laura uses here own deck-of-cards thing to immediately watch the footage, about five minutes after it was shot (and of course it includes sound, so she can actually hear as well as see what you shot).

I think they would be shocked at tv in general. I wonder if they would think it odd that people watch other people buy wedding dresses, eat big sandwiches, buy houses, pawn things, pick through barns of junk, not to mention the really bad reality tv.

1975er’s would be amazed that a TV is not a piece of furniture anymore but as thin as a credit card and can be hung on the wall.

Cars all look the same, have ridiculous names, operate everything with the push of a button, some can be plugged in, some are more expensive than yoir first house, and filking them with gas is a 1975 car payment.

Music doesn’t involve a disco ball. Rap would send them spinning. Graphic lyrics would be a jolt too.

2013 kids would find they actually would find out the meaning of “go out and play” and getting a good, well deserved ass beating by their parents.

I think they’d be astounded that you could buy movies (DVD or Blu Ray )for less than the price of an outing to the movie theater. When I was a kid I thought the coolest thing someone rich and powerful could do (besides have someone fix them a sandwich anytime day or night) was to watch a movie of their choosing in the comfort of their own home.

1975: Kids went to school, got the shit scared out of them by teachers and principals, walked home alone, went out to play with their friends unattended without head gear, elbow and knee pads., came home, did homework, had dinner with the family, watched “Welcome Back Kotter” went to bed.

2013: Wake the kid out of his/her stupor, fill them up with Ritalin, keep them in a car at the edge of the driveway for the bus to pick them up, sued the school district because YOUR kid had ADD and ran a pencil through the teachers lip and she should have been teaching better, swaddled the wuss in protective gear like he was a goalie, shuttled him to 87 different after school activities, grabbed something from the Drive Thru line, everyone in the family scatters to use iphones, ipads, Facebook.

I don’t know–I don’t remember people being able to run around much–a couple of houses over, but nothing like my parents did in the 1950s and 60s. I think (without much memory or proof) that things changed radically by the late 70s. Maybe it was more reporting of kidnapping or whatever, but kids didn’t run around too much.

I was born in 1976 and even I remember having free reign in my neighborhood. Riding my bike, going to a friends house ( and then on to another friends house). Walking to 7-Eleven with a few bucks to get a Slurpee and some candy. If my parents wanted to find me, they’d either walk down the street looking for me or call one of my friends houses and say I needed to come home. Most days it was “be home when the street light comes on!” So simple!!

A time traveler from 1975 would be saddened to see that 1975 fashions are back in style.
I didn’t care for that crap the first time itI came around and I sure as hell don’t care for it as recycled garbage!

Sure, the technology of the internet and digital media would be neat to Mr. 1975, but I think a black socialist in the white house? Gay marriage? Government spying on it’s people? Suspension of constitutional rights? The Jersey Shore? Id say give me a kilo of Xanax and send me back.

Probably be OK if it were a white socialist. Damn negroes. Although some of them seem to know the difference between its and it’s. The first is a non-gendered possessive pronoun; the second is a contraction, short for “it is”.

I think no one from that era would ever believe how intrusive and overbearing our government has become. Also, I think they would be terrified at the loss of liberty and freedom.
ATM’s would have amazed me.

. What did you people do to your hair?
. Cars are so fantastically good now!
. Where did all this traffic come from?
. What do you mean, I can’t smoke in the bar?
. We’re hitching rides to space from the Russians? WTF?
. I thought disco was bad, but your music REALLY sucks.
. How is this not a union job?
. You mean pot is only starting to become legal NOW?

Okay, I’m hitting 40 this Sept. & so I totally get it. Everything I’ve owned LP’s 45’s, 8 Track, Cassette Tapes, CD’s, Digital! Wow! Okay so I met my best friend Mike when I was 13 & due to divorce I was bounced back & forth from Ohio to Florida, Mike & I would spend hours, whole nights on the phone, you know the one with the long cord that would always knot up… we used to wish there was a TV on our phones so we could see each other… SKYPE BITCHES! Love it. 1000 miles away & I get to see him when we (still) talk for hours….)

Some one from 1975 would be baffled by everyone walking around with a beverage. Paying for water. Stores open 24 hours. No smoking. That Camaros, Mustangs and Challengers are still the same old models

All the news programs. All the reality programs. The Kardashians. That the hockey and basketball playoffs go into June. Tattoos on everyone not just sailors and bikers.

I graduated high school in 1979. Two of my best jobs weren’t even a concept then and one of those is obsolete today.

Imagine you are my guidance counselor in 1979 and I tell you
“I want to work in a store where we rent videotapes of Hollywood movies to customers and they take them home and watch them in their home video cassette machine”

Now Imagine I tell you I will only do that for a few years because eventually people will buy a digital download of the same movie and download it to their home computer.

Or “My goal is to use computers to develop web sites for businesses and newspapers so you can get the news and shop from your living room, on your computer over the internet”

My theory is my parents would have been called and I would have been sent for testing.

The folks from 1975 may be surprised by those who shoehorn themselves into clothes they have no business shoehorning themselves into, wail about cigarette smoking AND marijuana smoking, electronics, movies, TV, and the sheer cost of everything. Yeah, I know that the turntable my father won in 1975 was worth $175-200, which would be AT LEAST one week’s salary (if not more!) so I’m well aware of how expensive things were then too.

But the clothes!!! I cannot remember much of the 1970s–Bob Crane (but not Jonestown…what the hell?!); Kojak and the Rockford Files (vaguely); and the release of Some Girls (weird, I know). The clothes are what I remember most, and the clothes were UGLY then. I don’t care if it came from Zayre or Magnin’s. Fashion had no reason to be that atrocious, but there you go. Some people could do it–Telly Savalas could run around in those stupid batwing collars and enough chains to rival Mr. T, but it worked for him. William Shatner (see Impulse for a good laugh!), not so much.

Someone would pay $10.00 per month for satellite radio in their car?
A new roof on a normal size house costs $8,000.00? Do you own Windsor Castle?

A Dodge pick-up truck costs $40,000?
Apples are $2.00 per pound at the grocery store?
ADD, ADHD, what’s that?
You pay $28,000 per year for college at a Penn State and it ‘s not med school?
Cable costs $160 per month?
Your electric bill is about $170 per month?
The city charges to pick up the trash?
Your yard does not have clover and dandelions? How did that happen?
What’s a DUI?
What’s a printer cartridge? They cost $12.00 ?
You let that dog live IN your house?
You buy tomatoes? Where’s your garden?
A black man is President? Kiss my ass.
Four dollars for a cheese burger? Are you nuts?

On the other hand, a computer that fits in your pocket? US Steel has one the size of a football stadium that costs $3 million, and yours is better?

I was trying to watch All the President’s Men recently, and was so frustrated by their lack of technology. They were trying to track people down using a rotary phone, paper phone books from different cities, and just calling people to ask questions.

–You have how many channels on your TV?
–What do you mean the Drive-In movie was torn down and replaced by a big-box store?
–What’s a big-box store?
–Your house has how many bathrooms?
–Your house has air conditioning? In every room?
–What the hell is a Kia?
–There’s a major league baseball team in Arizona?
–What happened to the cabooses at the end of freight trains?
–McDonald’s sells salads?
–Where did Burger Chef go?
–Where did the payphones go?
–Where did American Motors go?

After reading the comments and noticing how much freedom other kids had (then again, when the 70s were over, I was 4, so..duh.) I do have to wonder what changed–there were some freaky ass people back then. No, there wasn’t a 24 hour news channel, but still–newspapers and the local TV (or national if the case was big enough). What made people so more paranoid today than 38 years ago? Were people more trusting then than they are today?

As for political events–any teenager or young adult that could remember the civil rights era and Vietnam wouldn’t be really surprised at what’s going on now (except who’s in the White House), and after Watergate, maybe they wouldn’t care.

(Sorry for the constant commenting–I did research on a survey for something similar 10 years ago. It’s a fascinating subject for me!)